For at least the past decade, the international political science community has been debating the state of the discipline, the level of its maturity, and the challenges to it from realpolitik (Goodin and Klingemann 1996, chap. 1). One of the most serious challenges came from the implosion of the USSR and subsequent transformation of political systems in Russia and Eastern Europe. Political scientists appeared unable to predict these global changes or to elaborate explanatory models of current processes. Applications of classic models to the new democracies has proven insufficient. This puts a problem of universality versus national specificity of political science on the agenda (Lecca 1997).

For Russian political scientists, this problem has some specific implications. First, the practice of political science is determined by its object—politics. It is well-known that perestroika, which started more than ten years ago, had no clear aims but was guided by the intuitive desire of Russia's political elite to modernize the country. Russian leaders wished to modernize the country by remaking the government in the model of a Western democratic system. But neither in the late 1980s nor now have political scientists or politicians worked out any clear means for achieving such a transition.

William Jefferson Clinton is only the second president to have been impeached by the House of Representatives. While he was not removed from office, roughly half of the Senate chamber voted him guilty on the perjury and obstruction of justice charges that the House formulated as articles of impeachment in early February 1999. Although Clinton remains in office, numerous politicians, political pundits, and media commentators continue to condemn his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky while she was a White House intern as immoral and reprehensible.

Many outspoken Republicans have raised questions about how the American people could continue to have confidence in their political leaders, government institutions, or the rule of law when a president who lied to the public, lied under oath, and obstructed justice remains in office. Others ask how they can explain this immoral behavior and thwarting of the law to their children, especially in light of all the salacious details that were made public in Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.

News of a possible extramarital affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky during the 1995–96 period surfaced in January 1998, coming to light in the course of investigations related to Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against the president. Tapes Linda Tripp made of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and turned over to Starr's office confirmed the allegations. What followed was a year-long exposé as details of the affair gradually tumbled into the public domain. The year ended with the House voting for impeachment on December 19, 1998, and the new year began with the Senate voting not to remove Clinton on February 12, 1999.

The death occurred on July 12, 1999, at a tragically young age, of Otto I.Q. Besser-Wisser, probably the most influential political thinker and analyst of our times.

He was born in 1906 on the island of Helgoland, where the bustling streets and crowded, busy marketplaces formed his early experience of life in a large and cosmopolitan urban metropolis. He was later to convert these young impressions into the central principles of physical and social distanciationalist politometrics, which have dominated Western political science ever since. In spite of its subsequent theoretical variations, refinements, and developments—in the form of neo-distanciationalism, post-distanciationalism, post-neodistanciationalism, and neo-postdistanciationalism—the essential core of Besser-Wisser's formulation is so simple, and yet so heuristically and ontologically valuable in the theoreticization of the politico-urban-time continuum, that it is puzzling that it took mankind two millennia to develop. The answer is, of course, that just as it took pure genius to uncover the principles of things such as gravity, the unconscious mind, the jet engine, and Guinness, so only someone of Besser-Wisser's uncommon genius and almost supernatural analytical perspicacity could go straight to the very heart of one of the simple yet eternal truths of the human condition.

Until I developed a new web site, I had no idea how much personal information webcasters collected on visitors. I always had assumed that surfing the Internet was an anonymous experience. The net was a benign tool that made my job easier. It brought the latest information on politics and media to my fingertips and eliminated my need to dig through dusty old newspapers.

In part, it was seeing how the web facilitated my political science work that convinced me to set up my own nonprofit site dedicated to state and national politics. If the Internet was such a positive force for public education, perhaps my site could inform people about political events, upcoming campaigns, and policy controversies.

Now that I am a certified webcaster, however, I am astonished at the level of detail available to those running Internet sites. Every time you visit a web site, your behavior is monitored. Webcasters don't know your name, but we know your Internet provider. If you log on through a school, university, business, or governmental agency, we generally can identify your institutional affiliation. In addition, we know what files you look at and how long you spend viewing each item down to the second.

This is an obvious goldmine for webcasters interested in catering to the tastes of their audience.